Penguins, Hockey and Serious Stuff Too: Scott’s Polar Chronicles

FOR THE RECORD Twelve issues of The South Polar Times — each a single handmade volume — were produced from 1902 to 1912. The last issue didn’t mention the death of the magazine’s founder, Robert Falcon Scott.Credit
Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) 2012, The British Library, 2012, The Scott Polar Institute 2012.

The British explorer Robert Falcon Scott finally reached his destination a century ago, Jan. 17, 1912, more than a month too late to claim victory in the race to be first to the South Pole. But the triumphant Norwegian Roald Amundsen could not deny him at least one distinction: Scott was the founder of The South Polar Times, the first magazine to be produced on the Antarctic continent.

Just about anything done in Antarctica on Scott’s first expedition, beginning in 1902, had a good chance of being a first. When his ship Discovery entered McMurdo Sound, among the gear in its hold was a typewriter, lots of typing paper and art supplies. Scott had decided, in the tradition of other Royal Navy long voyages, that there should be a monthly periodical to entertain and help the explorers keep their chins up.

Keepers of journalism’s flame should take note. The illustrious publication saturated its market. The single handmade copy of each issue, neatly typed and illustrated with photographs, watercolors and playful sketches, was passed around and read aloud to one and all, icebound during the darkness of the austral winter, April to August.

On the centenary of the ill-fated venture, in which Scott and four companions died while returning from the pole, a London publisher, the Folio Society, is issuing facsimiles of the 12 copies of The South Polar Times. Each volume in the set is a single issue, running from 30 to 50 pages, and a separate volume includes a commentary by Ann Savours, a polar historian. The complete set sells for $945 plus $50 postage and handling.

Joe Whitlock Blundell, the Folio Society’s production director, said that each page of the 12 issues — five issues in 1902, three in 1903, three in 1911 and one in 1912 — was reproduced from original material drawn from archives at the British Library, the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Research Institute. “The paper itself was quite thin,” he said, “but evidently good-quality and had not turned brown with age.”

An editorial in the first issue, presumably written by Ernest Shackleton, the first editor, invited all readers to contribute ideas and articles “so that when the coming hundred days of darkness are over, we may look back upon them as having been not only tolerable but happy.”

The contents ranged widely from expert descriptions of scientific research and launchings of weather balloons to reports on proceedings of the debating society (a fierce gale happened to blow the evening the topic was women’s rights) and other aspects of shipboard life.

One article noted there was “not much spare time,” with “collecting fish and other animals for scientific work, taking soundings and measuring the tides” and “working up the results of last season’s sledging and preparation for the coming season.” But they made time for hockey, notwithstanding “the unstinted generosity with which bruised shins and black-eyes have been bestowed.”

Edward J. Larson, a professor at Pepperdine University and the author of the recent book “An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science,” said the magazines, particularly the early issues, were “both substantive and entertaining,” useful to historians in capturing “the spirit of the place.”

The illustrations, many by the naturalist Edward A. Wilson, are colorful, striking and abundant, with caricatures of the officers and scientists that compare favorably to the art in a contemporary British magazine, Vanity Fair. And some of the whimsical writing showed influences of another venerable magazine, Punch.

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Adélie penguins, one account began, “came running up in twos and threes to greet us, and a more delightfully comical sight can scarcely be imagined.

“Their interest was intense, and their haste to reach the ship was checked only by their childlike care in jumping over the little water leads between the floes; and, at last, when only a hundred yards or so intervened between them and ourselves, they would stand and stare in open-eyed astonishment, craning their necks to see all they could at a safe distance.

“Sometimes one of them would advance a little further with an inquiring squawk, and then overcome with its temerity it would retreat again to turn and stare and stand on tiptoe and flap its flippers and laughed at its own absurdity.”

David M. Wilson, a polar historian whose great-uncle was the artist on both of Scott’s expeditions, called The South Polar Times “a complete mine of information” about early exploration of the seventh continent.

Last month, Mr. Wilson and his brother, Christopher, published “Edward Wilson’s Antarctic Notebooks,” which includes the artist’s last notes and sketches. Along with Scott and three others, he died in a blizzard, only 11 miles from the depot where food and fuel were waiting.

“One of his last sketches was of Amundsen’s tent at the South Pole,” David Wilson said. “Imagine, this is one of the worst days of his life, and he has the discipline to sit down and record the scene of their disappointment.”

As for the last editor of The South Polar Times, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who would later write a highly regarded memoir, “The Worst Journey in the World,” it was past time to produce the final issue, dated June 1912. Everyone at base camp knew that Scott’s polar party must have perished, but no mention of this appeared in the magazine.

Mr. Blundell of the Folio Society pointed out that the magazine ran a weather table for March, the month they presumably died. This seemed to tell the tale “of their unbelievably bad luck” to run into harsher weather than in previous years.

The issue recorded without comment: “Per cent of hours when wind was over gale strength/18.9. Maximum temperature/20.6. Minimum temperature/-14.6.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2012, on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Penguins, Hockey and Serious Stuff Too: Scott’s Polar Chronicles. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe